Dear Jim!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Paris, 1975 - Dear Jim,

Dear Jim,
Well, we finally visited your grave. I can't speak for the others, but I suppose I didn't come to your funeral because I was so mad and disappointed in you the last few years the band was together.
But you knew that. It took me three years to pay my respects, I'm ashamed to say, but I'm here.
It wasn't hard to find your plot with all the graffiti leading up to it. But I was shocked that there wasn't any marker. It seems Pam, your girlfriend (or were you married?), ran off with the money we gave her.
There were rumors that it went into her arm.
Did you know she was into the brown powder?
Hey, that's a low blow.
I don't know why I'm writing this to you.
Proves how much you possessed all of us - me, at least. You're supposed to be fucking dead, and here I am brooding over a letter to you in a hotel.
But I don't care. I'm still pissed off and hurting.
I wish I would have had
the balls to say some things to you back in the
sixties, but you were incredibly powerful, and
intimidating. I'm extremely proud of our music, but there's some things I've got to get off my chest.
It's too late - for you. But it's not too late for me, and
maybe some others, like the young kids who still
idolize you.
One of the newly carved quotes from your
fans implies that you were into smack. I didn't know
that. How could I? I didn't know you very well at all
during your last days. I didn't want to. It's ironic how
the parasites who met you at the end of your life, no
matter how briefly, are now trying to cash in on your
friendship.
While I couldn't even look into your eyes. Those
demonic eyes. I had to protect myself. Don't ask me from what.
If anyone could have pulled you out of your nosedive, it was Pam, only she started to slide into drugs, casual affairs, and general decadence along with you. I don't know who encouraged whom, and blaming doesn't do any good.
What was that big black Morrison cloud that hovered over your head? Anyone who came into close contact with you found himself under the fringes of that darkness. You were the fucking Prince of Darkness, Jimbo. At some point the myth we were building overtook us and started running things instead of the other way around. You'd think we could've torn it down or at least backed off a little.
Or not underestimated the power of a myth.
But it was a Game Called Insane, as you say, and you were its Poet-Priest, as they say; I say it became a freak show. When did it get out of hand, Jim?
What was the point of no return?
I need to know because I'm still carrying a shitload of guilt around.
John Densmore, Riders On The Storm

[ensenada]

wow thats really moving. john was portrayed as the guy that got on with jim the least and although he was pissed off with the way jim behaved etc, he still has loads of respect and love for the guy. john integrity is second to none, he is the guy that has stuck to jims legacy and believes more than the others. and this letter really gives an insight into what he felt towards jim and the fact that he, being in the band, didnt even know what jim was upto in his last days.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

John was my least fave Door for 30 odd years....I guess unless you are in Led Zeppelin drummers tend to be ovelooked.....but I loved them all of course so that was no big deal.....but he has shown over the last decade that HE alone is the only true DOOR left alive.
He remembers why they formed a band in the first place where 50% of The Doors have forgotten that.
Johns book is a moving experience to read and will probably still be read in the 22nd century let alone this one......
It is a bit whiny and its fair to say John did whine when he was a Door but only he now stands foresquare with Jim Morrisons legacy and only he would not sell the family silver to Bill Gates....
In a world where rock legends like Free are remembered for advertising chewing gum WE are bloody lucky to have him.....

[hippieflowergirl67]

You got that right! He's one of my ultimate fave drummers! ;D

[mywildlove4371]

wow, Ive read ROS several years ago, but I had forgot about that part.. It is cool that you have posted that in here for us to read... It was truly a moving "letter to jim"

[earthchild]

wow john thats great man im really blown away.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Well, we finally visited your grave. I can't speak for the others, but I suppose I didn't come to your funeral because I was so mad and disappointed in you the last few years the band was together.

The nearest we will probably get to the reason why the band did NOT visit Pere Lachaise on May 1st 1972 when less than 2 miles from it.

It's ironic how
the parasites who met you at the end of your life, no
matter how briefly, are now trying to cash in on your
friendship.

I don't mind John that much and I believe his book did try to show his sincerity and honesty about how he felt about Jim.
But it's a supreme irony that 2011 will see JD become one of those parasites as he will have Doors product to push.
He promoted the Godawful film WYS and sold the Matrix album on Jim's 65th so he cannot plead innocence when it comes to the parasite stakes.
Of course he confounds that view with much of what he says and more importantly does such as the Book Soup poetry reading on Jim's 65th back in 2008.

It's a complex question when referring to John. Ray and Robby are more simple as their actions speak loudly. But JD still seems to have something left from his Doors days that harks back to a more innocent and naive era.
We will see these next few months just how John and the other two measure up.

I will try to add more from ROTS as John does make some good points in his 'letters to Jim'.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

In one of the many letters John Densmore wrote to the Post-Jim Morrison (this one written 12 years after his death), in Los Angeles in 1983, he writes the following:

Los Angeles 1983

“ . . . . . As the typical flower child, your aggression made me uncomfortable too. Was I the sensitive male the poet Robert Bly warns about who brought forth my feminine consciousness in the sixties but failed to expedite those new values with positive male energy?
I think the seventies were a result of this. In the early eighties we saw aggression become popular again and the Doors’ resurgence began.
We were new wave and punk before our time. These musicians have been gobbled up into different bands and fed to the great god of merchandising.
What’s left of the genuine revolutionary punk bands has eroded into narcissism, and they are dying out, as you died taking the dark male energy of Dionysus, Greek god of wine, too literally.
The positive side of your dark nature was to eradicate the bullshit.


Reflecting on this today, I realize that you know that Western man’s quest for a better job, a house, and car was a subsitute for his real quest: something sacred.
That’s why you weren’t interested in material things. You also knowe that the church was dead, that its symbols and rituals no longer had meaning for us, so you challenged the proselytizing of money-hungry preachers and lonely “sinners” in “PETTITIONING THE LORD WITH PRAYER.” (“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.”)

Now I’m going to preach to you for a second.

What you missed was that the need for the sacred must be transformed to an inner cathedral. Our songs contacted the Dionysian side of spiritual life through music, but “the God of Wine cheers and warms men’s hearts; it also makes them drunk,” according to Edith Hamilton’s book on mythology, a book I know you were aware of.
I’ll refresh your memory some more. She goes on:

The Greeks were a people who saw facts very clearly. They could not shut their eyes to the ugly and degrading side of wine drinking and see only the delightful side.
They knew Dionysus was man’s benefactor and he was man’s destroyer.

The momentary sense of exultant power wine-drinking can give was only a sign to show that they had within them more than they knew; they cou8ld themselves become divine.

Maybe you are a god! Down here you are a media god. Back in the sixties I thought if our songs lasted ten years, the would be something. Well, we’re going on twenty and there’s no end in sight.

I wish we’d learned a little more about each other. Then maybe we would have been closer and ultimately wouldn’t have traveled down such different paths.
Or would we have? I’m trying to find out, even now. You certainly have made a mark. You’ve influenced me a lot, I’ve even been reading a little Nietzsche! A quote of his comes to mind, “A man’s ancestors have paid the price of what he is.”

You definitely are in me. And so I want to say thank you. And good-bye."


Taken from John Densmore’s Book, Riders on the Storm,